O que callsign faz?
Naming is taste, not thesaurus. A good name survives being said aloud in a meeting, typed into a terminal, and searched on Google.
What makes a name good
- Sayable — passes the phone test: say it once, the listener can spell it.
- Spellable — no ambiguous letters (ph/f, c/k), no forced double letters, no keyboard gymnastics.
- Short — 1-3 syllables for products/tools; compound lowercase-hyphen for repos is fine.
- Evocative over descriptive —
stripe,linear,raycastsuggest a feeling;fast-payment-apidescribes a spec. Metaphors age better than features. - Room to grow — don't name v1 after its only feature (
pdf-mergerdies when it also splits). - Searchable — common dictionary words need a twist (
vercelnotvercel-hosting); coined words need to still be pronounceable.
Process
- Extract the essence: ask (or infer) what the thing does, who it's for, and the feeling it should give (fast? tidy? calm? powerful? playful?). One sentence max.
- Generate wide, across registers — at least three of these:
- Metaphor: domain-adjacent imagery (
loom,sentry,tide) - Coined: short invented words that sound like the feeling (
v0,supabase) - Compound: two crisp words fused (
vercel= versatile+excel,netlify) - Plain-word twist: real word, new job (
notion,obsidian,clerk) - Heritage: mythology/astronomy/latin — sparingly, only if it fits the brand
- Metaphor: domain-adjacent imagery (
- Filter ruthlessly against the six criteria above. Kill anything you'd need to spell twice.
- Check collisions before presenting:
gh search repos <name>for repos, and note if the .com/.dev/.sh is obviously taken by a major product. Don't promise availability — say "checked, no major collision". - Present 6-10 candidates, grouped by register, one line each: the name, why it works, one honest watch-out. Mark your top pick and say why. Let the user decide — taste is theirs.
Pitfalls
- No
-ify/-ly/AI-prefix salad unless it genuinely fits. - No inside jokes that embarrass you in six months; no names you'd hesitate to say to a client.
- Match the ecosystem: CLI tools tolerate hyphens and lowercase; consumer products need a capitalizable word; skills/plugins want
kebab-casethat reads as a verb or noun, not a sentence. - Chinese-English mixed audiences: check the name doesn't romanize into something awkward in pinyin, and that a Chinese gloss exists if the user needs one.
Output format
**意境组**
- name — 为什么成立(一句话);注意点
**造词组**
- ...
推荐: X — 理由